As a prose writer, Mrs. Smith has been for several years a frequent contributor to the leading Magazines. Her contributions of this sort, chiefly stories and sketches, would make several volumes. Her magazine stories are chiefly of a legendary character, and many of them are connected with the history of her native State. She purposes collecting and publishing them under the title of “Legends of Maine.”
Her largest story, “The Salamander,” was published in a volume in 1848. She has chosen for the scene of this story the romantic valley of the Ramapo, in the State of New York, and dated it about two centuries back. It is, however, purely an imaginative, not an historical work. There may be facts embodied in the narrative, of which types are to be found in the early history of the Dutch colony, as there may be descriptions of scenery corresponding to what actually exists in the Ramapo valley. But the ideas which form the staple of the book, and which give it all its significance, are no more American, than the ideas of the “Midsummer Night’s Dream” are English. The work, in other words, is purely of an imaginative character. It is founded on those dark mysterious legends—half Christian, half pagan—which prevailed in central Germany during the middle ages. Out of these wild myths, Mrs. Smith has produced a fiction, somewhat over-bold in speculation, occasionally careless in execution, but full of significance, brilliant—almost dazzling—in some of its conceptions, and everywhere teeming with grace and beauty.
“Riches Without Wings,” “Western Captive,” “Moss Cup,” and “Dandelion,” are the titles of some of her smaller volumes.
At present, Mrs. Smith is engaged upon a series of papers for the New York Tribune, called “Woman and her Needs.”
The extracts which follow are taken from the “Salamander.” The full significance of these passages does not appear, when they are thus sundered from their connexion. But the extraordinary beauty of the descriptions must be obvious to every reader.
THE MYSTERY OF THE MOUNTAIN.
While Hugo saw these things where he stood high up in the mountain, his eyes followed the sparks from the furnace, and he began to wonder that he should hear the sound of the flame at such a distance. Then he bethought himself and looked around, for, what he had supposed the sound from the heat of the forge, proceeded from something close to his feet, at which he marvelled, seeing nothing. It was a short tinkling sound as if many metallic substances rang against one another, and crystals clicked their
